Women are not treated as being equal to men. Most people know that and most people feel that is wrong. So why doesn’t it change?

Religion.

Men, regardless of country or race, will never accept a woman as an equal as long as he believes his god says they are not equal.

This issue becomes obvious when extremists elements of any religion do horrendous things to women and girls because their holy writings say that man is superior. The treatment of women in many religions makes Harvey Weinstein seem saintly.

In 2014, an Islamic extremist group known as Boko Haram in Nigeria kidnapped 276 girls from a public, government-run school. The girls were raped, beaten, and sold as wives for the equivalent of $6. A Boko Haram leader said, “Allah instructed me to sell them…I will carry out his instructions.” In the first few weeks after the kidnapping, the Nigerian government, the Royal Air Force, and U.S. intelligence all had located groups of the kidnapped girls, but all failed to take action or were prevented from taking action.

In 2008, authorities removed 534 women and children from a Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) polygamist compound in Texas for protection after girls as young as 14 were being forced into marriage older men. According to NBC News, “The women were not allowed to wear red — the color Jeffs said belonged to Jesus — and were not allowed to cut their hair. They were also kept isolated from the outside world.”

The inequality of women is less obvious when a government bows down to the will of a religion. In the United States, many religious groups seek to interfere or ban contraceptives and abortions based on a fundamental belief that their religion allows them to dictate to what a woman may or may not do. Many of these same groups push for religious schools that reinforce the idea that women are subservient to men.

Many churches refuse to allow women into roles of leadership, deeming that their religious writings from thousands of years ago forbid it.

It is time that we accept women as equals in every aspect of life so that there is no confusion of when a woman is equal and when she is not. It will be impossible for women to gain true equality as long as religious organizations embrace inequality in their churches.